Fame in the 20th Century

Concept

James and his team developed the series as a study on the concept fame, and more specifically "world fame". They focused on over 250 people who are "undeniably world famous". Certain artists, musicians or sports figures became well known even for people who don't know much about their field. Louis Armstrong is for instance world famous, even for non-jazz fans or experts. Pelé became the most famous soccer player, even in the US: one of the few countries in the world where the sport isn't popular. People who know nothing about art have heard of the name Pablo Picasso and know his style. People who are not interested in tennis have heard of John McEnroe, due to his bad behavior on the tennis court. More people know Luciano Pavarotti than Plácido Domingo.

Clive James focused on fame in the 20th century, because the arrival of mass media, film and television changed forever the ways people became famous. In previous centuries people could only become famous by doing something that was remembered ages later. Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte conquered countries, Jesus Christ developed a religion, ... In the 20th century people could become world famous in less than no time and without doing anything, thanks to the arrival of mass media. Movie stars like Charlie Chaplin, for instance, became global stars due to the nearly universal reach of film. James cites Chaplin as the first truly world famous 20th century celebrity. The invention of the film close-up made people on film screens appear larger than life and thus increased the emotional involvement of the audience. This often led to mass hysteria and confusion between an actor's stage persona and the roles he played on the screen (as in the case of Rudolph Valentino). Certain politicians in the century have used the media to promote their own image to the public, for instance John F. Kennedy, who looked like a movie star, and Ronald Reagan who was a former movie star.

People could become world famous in a matter of a few days. Orson Welles became notorious after his radio play The War of the Worlds caused mass hysteria in the United States. Salman Rushdie, who was already known in literary circles, became a household name to the broader public due to the fatwa spoken out against him in 1989. Clive James sees the USA as the place where this new type of mass media fame was born. According to him international fame is only possible if the celebrity becomes famous in the USA. Cricketer Jack Hobbs was world famous throughout the British Empire in the interbellum, but unknown in countries where cricket was not popular, like the USA. Babe Ruth however became internationally famous even though baseball was played hardly anywhere else outside the US.

Other celebrities have been around for so long that the reason they originally became famous has been almost forgotten. Elizabeth Taylor has been cited by James as an example of someone who originally achieved fame as an actress, but later became more famous for her weddings and lifestyle. As James observed, the fame of some celebrities fades away after a few years. Silent movie stars like Florence Lawrence and William S. Hart, for instance, have nowadays sunk into obscurity. Other celebrities have become more famous over time. James cites T.E. Lawrence as an example. The British military officer became famous during World War One, but only became truly world famous with the general public thanks to the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. Celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Michael Jackson, The Beatles on the other hand, have never remained out of publicity and are nowadays famous for simply being who they are. Some people became famous due to their association with other celebrities. Examples are Yoko Ono (the wife of Beatle John Lennon), Lady Diana (who married Prince Charles in 1981) and Wallis Simpson (whose affair with King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom caused his abdication). Another phenomenon examined in the series is the change of someone's fame during time and thanks to mass media coverage. Charles Lindbergh, first famous as an aviation pioneer, became, to his horror, even more famous when his son was kidnapped and murdered. Dwight Eisenhower's fame as a general in World War II helped him win the presidential election a decade later. Joseph McCarthy used the media in his hunt against communism, but in the end the media worked against him. Elvis Presley's fame grew to legendary proportions after his death, when he sold more albums than during his lifetime.

When Clive James was asked by Charlie Rose in 1993 to name the three most famous people of the century, he cited Elvis Presley, Mohammed Ali, and Bruce Lee. He also mentioned Adolf Hitler, saying, "but the fact is the young Neo-Nazis in Germany now don't really know much about Hitler. So that kind of fame not necessarily lasts."

Famous moments

The television series made use of seldom seen archive material and world famous film and audio material where celebrities did or said famous things. Sometimes the footage wasn't that famous, but was used as a typical example of what the public associates with the celebrity or to show them during a more casual moment, instead of as an icon. Examples are:

A recording of Enrico Caruso's famous delivery of Vesti La Giubba, the first best selling record.

Harry Houdini escaping while being tied to a chair in the presence of a sleeping guard.

Isadora Duncan dancing in a forest.

Charlie Chaplin's first appearance as The Tramp in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914).

Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921).

Buster Keaton in the "rock boulder" scene in Seven Chances (1925).

Greta Garbo and John Gilbert sharing the first "horizontal kiss" in Flesh and the Devil (1925).

Benito Mussolini giving one of his bombastic speeches.

Al Jolson speaking in the first movie with sound The Jazz Singer (1927).

Josephine Baker performing her famous banana skirt dance.

The Long Count Fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney (1927).

Charles Lindbergh landing in Paris and being greeted by a massive crowd after flying non-stop over the Atlantic Ocean (1927).

Alfred Hitchcock in one of his earliest film cameos, in the film Blackmail

A recording of Louis Armstrong's West End Blues and What a Wonderful World.

Johnny Weissmuller swinging from a vine, shouting his Tarzan yell and delivering his famous speech as Tarzan to Jane.

A recording of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

A recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Marlene Dietrich singing while sitting on a crate in Der Blaue Engel (1930).

James Cagney pushing a grapefruit in the face of his lover in The Public Enemy (1931).

Greta Garbo asking to be "left alone" in Grand Hotel (1932).

Mae West asking Cary Grant "to come up and see her some time" in She Done Him Wrong (1933).

George Bernard Shaw describing Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin in a film reel.

Adolf Hitler' s final speech in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (1934).

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing together in Top Hat (1935).

Clark Gable removing his shirt and revealing himself to be bare chested in It Happened One Night (1934).

Laurel and Hardy using a box of snuff on side of a bridge in Bonnie Scotland (1935).

The Marx Brothers' parody on the MGM lion logo at the beginning of their film A Night at the Opera (1935).

Shirley Temple singing Animal Crackers in My Soup in Curly Top (1935).

Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

Orson Welles' notorious radio play The War of the Worlds (1938).

Neville Chamberlain declaring "peace in our time" and waving a peace agreement he signed with Adolf Hitler at Munich (1938)

James Stewart's final speech in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).

Judy Garland singing Over The Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh's final scene in Gone with the Wind where Gable says, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" (1939).

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt' s fireside chats.

Glenn Miller performing In the Mood.

Charlie Chaplin imitating Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940).

Bette Davis shooting her partner while descending some stairs in The Letter (1940)

Winston Churchill declaring that "we will fight them on the beaches" (1940).

Orson Welles in his groundbreaking film Citizen Kane (1941).

Betty Grable as the Pin-Up Girl.

Humphrey Bogart in the "Play it, Sam" scene in Casablanca (1942).

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the final scene of Casablanca (1942).

Ronald Reagan in his famous "Where's the rest of me?" scene in Kings Row (1942).

Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again".

Rita Hayworth singing "Put the Blame on Mame" in Gilda.

Benito Mussolini hung upside down in public after being murdered by partisans (1945).

The coronation of Elizabeth II (1952).

Gene Kelly singing "Singin' in the Rain" in the movie of the same name (1952).

The I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" in which Lucille Ball's character has to give birth and is brought to the hospital. It was the most watched television broadcast in the United States at that time (1953).

Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate which makes her dress blown above her knees in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

James Dean in a television commercial for road safety.

Elvis Presley singing and swinging his hips during his highly watched and controversial first appearance in The Ed Sullivan Show (1956).

Pablo Picasso painting on the camera in Henri-Georges Clouzot's documentary The Mystery of Picasso (1956).

Nikita Khrushchev debating with Richard Nixon during the Kitchen Debate (1959).

Nikita Khrushchev during his shoe-banging incident at the United Nations convention (1960)

Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy in 1962.

Martin Luther King delivering his I Have a Dream speech (1963).

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in the famous Zapruder film (1963).

Jack Ruby assassinating Lee Harvey Oswald (1963).

The Beatles arriving in the United States at the airport in 1964 and performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (1963).

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra (1963).

Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's westerns.

Mohammed Ali, declaring himself "the greatest" after winning the 1964 world championship boxing.

The Rolling Stones performing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".

The Beatles performing "All You Need Is Love" in an international live television broadcast (1967).

The Beatles visiting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1967–1968).

Elvis Presley performing during his Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special

Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon and saying: "It's one small step for men, one giant leap for mankind." (1969)

A 1970 commercial for Lanvin chocolate starring Salvador Dalí.

Frank Sinatra performing "My Way".

Clint Eastwood delivering his "Magnum"-speech in Dirty Harry.

Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972).

Olga Korbut, Mark Spitz and Bobby Fischer at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (1973).

Richard Nixon's resignation speech after the Watergate scandal (1974).

Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Robert De Niro during his famous "You talkin' to me?" speech in Taxi Driver (1976).

Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (1976).

Gerald Ford caught on camera during several of his famous falls and other accidents.

The Sex Pistols performing "God Save the Queen".

John McEnroe shouting and protesting against the referee during his tennis match against Björn Borg (1980).

A late 1970s commercial for Paul Masson champagne with Orson Welles.

Larry Hagman being shot in his role as J. R. Ewing in Dallas in 1980.

The wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in 1981.

Ronald Reagan being shot by John Hinckley, Jr. (1981).

Michael Jackson in his famous music video "Thriller" and singing "Billie Jean" at the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever special in 1983, where he performed his first moon walk dance.

Madonna dressed in wedding whites in the legend-making appearance at the MTV awards in 1984, where her performance sent spinning all previous standards of acceptable raunchiness in pop music.

Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "I'll be back" in The Terminator (1984).

The infamous cliffhanger ending of the Dynasty episode "Moldavian Massacre" (1985) in which a wedding of the main characters is interrupted by terrorists in a military coup, seemingly killing many cast members, including Joan Collins as Alexis.

Sylvester Stallone killing people as John Rambo.

Bob Geldof at the Live Aid concert (1985).

Oliver North trying to defend himself in front of the United States Congress at the height of the Iran-Contra affair (1987).

Luciano Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma" at the first Three Tenors concert in 1990.

Early 20th century celebrities who were already famous in the late 19th century

Clive James included them because these celebrities were internationally famous at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century.

William Randolph Hearst, Thomas Alva Edison, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Leon Tolstoy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and Buffalo Bill.

1900–1918

Enrico Caruso, Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright, Louis Blériot, Marie Curie, Theodore Roosevelt, Florence Lawrence, Francis X. Bushman, William S. Hart, Theda Bara, Harry Houdini, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, Henry James, Jack Johnson, Wilhelm II, Paul von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, George V of the United Kingdom, Lloyd George, Lord Kitchener, The Red Baron, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Mata Hari, Lenin, Henry Ford, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Sigmund Freud, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer

1918–1932

Suzanne Lenglen, Anna Pavlova, Nellie Melba, Amy Johnson, Malcolm Campbell, Henry Seagrave, Jack Hobbs, Donald Bradman, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudolph Valentino, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Coco Chanel, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Al Jolson, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, T. S. Eliot, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mae West, George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bruno Hauptmann

1932–1939

Benito Mussolini, George Bernard Shaw, Adolf Hitler, Rudolph Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Eva Braun, Johnny Weissmuller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, Shirley Temple, Arturo Toscanini, Walt Disney, Gary Cooper, Howard Hughes, Amelia Earhart, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, James Cagney, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Jean Harlow, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Ernest Hemingway, Francisco Franco, Orson Welles, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, Wallis Simpson, George VI of the United Kingdom, Salvador Dalí, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, Neville Chamberlain, Joseph Stalin, Judy Garland, J. Edgar Hoover, Billie Holiday

1939–1945

Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Philippe Pétain, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Hirohito, Hideki Tōjō, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erwin Rommel, Bernard Law Montgomery, Lord Louis Mountbatten, George Formby, Jr., Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, Laurence Olivier, Douglas MacArthur, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Cary Grant, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Cocteau, Chester W. Nimitz, Harry S. Truman, Ava Gardner, Audie Murphy, Guy Gibson, Douglas Bader, Mao Zedong, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Parker, Margot Fonteyn

1945–1960

Liberace, Lucille Ball, Dezi Arnaz, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, Roger Bannister, Elizabeth II, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, Edward Murrow, Paul Robeson, Richard Burton, Gene Kelly, Sophia Loren, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Brigitte Bardot, Billy Graham, Diana Dors, Guy Gibson, Richard Todd, Kenneth More, Alec Guinness, Grace Kelly, Rainier III, Hugh Hefner, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Miles Davis, Farouk I, Aga Khan III, Prince Aly Khan, Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Charlton Heston, Aristotle Onassis, Maria Callas, Evita Peron, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Colonel Tom Parker, Pele, Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro

1960–1969

John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Christine Keeler, John Profumo, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Sellers, Steve McQueen, Rudolph Nureyev, Yuri Gagarin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Lyndon B. Johnson, Diana Ross, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Brian Epstein, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan, Che Guevara, William Calley, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Jane Fonda, Leonid Brezhnev, William Shatner, Clint Eastwood, Neil Armstrong, Charles Manson, Andy Warhol, Prince Charles

1969–1981

Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino, Cher, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Raymond Burr (as Ironside), William Conrad (as Cannon), Peter Falk (as Columbo), James Garner (as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files), Telly Savalas (as Kojak), The Osmonds, Gerald Ford, Mark Spitz, Bobby Fischer, Olga Korbut, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jodie Foster, Roger Moore, Björn Borg, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, John McEnroe, ABBA, Bruce Lee, David Bowie, Patty Hearst, Idi Amin, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, John Travolta, Farrah Fawcett, George Lucas, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, The Sex Pistols, Jimmy Carter, Pope John Paul II, Meryl Streep, Larry Hagman (as J. R. Ewing in Dallas), Ruhollah Khomeini

1981–1992

Lech Wałęsa, Margaret Thatcher, Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley, Jr., Sylvester Stallone, Lady Diana, Michael Jackson, Joan Collins, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Bob Geldof, Oliver North, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Donald Trump, Martina Navratilova, Muammar al-Gaddafi, George H. W. Bush, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Salman Rushdie, Václav Havel, Patrick Swayze, Bruce Willis, Mike Tyson, Saddam Hussein, Norman Schwarzkopf, Luciano Pavarotti